Rodney Ascher is a sly master of mining potentially jokey or gimmicky subjects for the alienation they primordially express.
As in Room 237, the subject of obsession is complemented by a despairing attempt to process it, corral it, and somehow conquer it.
The Nightmare seems frustratingly content with alarming us with shock cuts and surface-level boogie monsters.
Irony is a popular pose struck throughout these shorts.
Ascher’s film gets a sterling Blu-ray transfer and some illuminating extras from MPI Media Group.
A prismatic meditation on an entire nation, Eliav Lilti’s documentary is history as abstraction.
Ascher discusses what he learned most from The Shining fans profiled in Room 237 and his own love of Kubrick.
It positions The Shining as standing in for cinema, for history, for obsession, for postmodern theory buckling under the film’s heft.
Room 237 is more companion piece than standalone work.
With Ascher’s fantastic hoot of a movie, this year’s omnipresent Sundance tagline (“Look Again”) has finally lived up to its promise.